Indie roguelike deckbuilder Dire Decks has been stolen and released on Steam under a different name by “developer” Terry Brash, and he’s apparently unwilling to take his version of the game down.
According to Dire Decks developer kindanice on X (formerly Twitter), Brash stole the game without their permission, and though kindanice has “tried to get him to take the game down”, Brash is “unwilling to do so”.
In case you’re wondering, the game in question is Wildcard, which you can find on Steam. I haven’t linked it here because I don’t want to send any traffic its way, but a quick search should reveal it.
Earlier today, Brash advertised Wildcard on X, promising a “free action roguelike deckbuilder with online leaderboards”. Users quickly began to fill Brash’s replies with allegations that the game was stolen.
Brash hasn’t responded directly to any of these allegations, but he has posted a couple of bizarre memes on X, including an It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia clip modded to include the line “did you copy another game?” and a SpongeBob meme.
He also promises that Wildcard will remain free on Steam, and that it will “prominently” display the names of the top four players on the leaderboard, although again, these messages are flooded with responses accusing Brash of stealing the game.
What’s strange is that Brash hasn’t made any kind of attempt to refute the allegations of theft (besides the aforementioned memes, which hardly count). His strategy appears to be just brazenly leaving the game up on Steam and hoping all of this blows over.
Brash’s repurposing of Dire Decks is pretty barefaced, but it’s not clear what’s going to happen next. There’s always the DMCA takedown route, although that would only work if art assets or code were directly copied from Dire Decks.
In any case, if you think Dire Decks looks at all interesting to you, then I’d urge you to go check it out on Itch.io. Whatever you do, just don’t play the Steam version when it comes out.
